Chapter 3
Even though I wish I could forget. I wish I could take it all back…
But I can’t.
It’s far too late now.
I killed someone.
Because of me, someone died.
We had summered at Woodmont. Marianne had taken us in and even though Dad had been working back home he had flown out for the weekend and we were all spending as much time together as possible before he had to travel again on the Monday for a big meeting in the city.
I remember the morning better than I remember the actual event because it was the last time everything was normal. We had been sat in the kitchen baking cinnamon bread and Marianne was smoking hashish in the orangery. I could smell the sweet scent of the strawberry smoke mixing in with the deliciousness of the warm oven and when Dad came in he looked at us all and smiled.
Mom had her feet up on the table, crossed at the ankles and we all looked the same. All of us had our long, wavy, black hair trailing right down our backs. It was a family trait that had survived generations. A gene so strong it didn’t matter who one of The Black Women bred with, it would always remain.
“Look at you girls,” he said as he wrapped his arm around my mother’s neck and kissed her on the cheek.
Marianne made sweet tea and we all sat around the table picking at the hot cinnamon bread and shoveling it into our mouths. By the time it had cooled we were all full and tired, and ready for a late morning nap, but Mom said we couldn’t waste the day. It was such a happy morning. And if only we had stayed in the house, it would have remained that way.
We walked out of the back of the house and down towards the lake. The grounds of Woodmont bordered on the north shore and we were lucky to have such a lovely spot to be able to spend our days. People came from across the country to rent houses at Valport and they all wanted a lakeside view. We had it at our disposal and for that reason we almost seemed to take it for granted.
We’d been there for around an hour when Mom started to complain about being hungry again. Dad could barely believe it when I said I was too, but it was the first year I had bled and I was hormonal. My tummy was solid as a rock and I knew it was coming.
“Aradia,” Dad called to me as he pulled out the blankets and trailed them across the stony beach. “Why don’t you run back to the house and ask Marianne to bring down something for us?”
I nodded and started back up towards Woodmont. It was hot and the sweat prickled the back of my neck. I needed to shower but I was enjoying having both of my parents around me so much that I didn’t want to miss a moment of fun down at the lake.
It was whilst I was walking back that it happened. I decided to take a short cut by going through the forest to the left of the house. I had never ventured in there properly because of how it was so overgrown, and by the time I was inside of there and realized how dense the foliage was, I was completely lost and had begun to panic.
“Marianne?” I called. “Dad?”
The tears bubbled up out of me and my heart started to race. I could feel a tingling in my arms that I had never had before and although it frightened me, I also knew that it was going to lead to something important. I stopped still and even as the tears tumbled down my cheeks I felt rooted to the ground and it was as if an energy was vibrating throughout me. I screamed as it started to overpower me and it wasn’t until I couldn’t stand it any longer that I heard laughter coming from the trees to my right…
I tried not to do it, but it was out of fear and embarrassment.
The boy came forward out of the trees. He was alone but he was pointing and laughing, calling me a freak and saying, “Look at the witch girl, she’s going to blow.”
In an instant an otherworldly fire I had never known to exist thundered through me and shot out of my fingertips. I spat fire and black ash and in my mind I wanted to grab hold of the boy so hard and squeeze the life out of him. I don’t know where the aggression came from, I was always so placid… but in an instant he looked like I’d punched him in the chest. His eyes went wide like saucers and as white as stone, and he dropped down dead.
I could feel a trail between him and I… even though we were ten feet apart… it was like a fine silver thread had connected us and as the life left his body I could feel it whispering away through the branches of the trees.
That’s when I really screamed.
I looked down at that boy and I could see the look of horror on his face, as if he had been petrified and killed by the fright.
“Aradia!” Marianne shouted as she ran through the trees, her hair whipping out and catching on branches as she went. “Don’t move!”
I was shaking when she got to me, my fingertips were electric and she wrestled me to the ground, shushing me and telling me to be quiet.
“He’s dead Marianne,” I sobbed as she held me close. “What did I do?”
Even then, I knew it was me that had done it. I’d never felt magic before and my mother and Marianne had never told me about our family. But there I was, thirteen and I had just killed a boy because they were too afraid for me.
The Black Women are cursed.
That’s what I learned from that day and what I’ve had to live with every day since.
It’s in our blood.
It runs deep in our veins and no man is safe around us.
When Dad saw me that day in the forest, I was screaming so loud it could no doubt be heard from town.
“What are you people?” he hissed to my mother who was shaking and rocking back and forth.
“Don’t…” she whispered.
Even after fifteen years of marriage, she had never confided in him. She had long learned to control her powers, and it wasn’t until little baby Aradia Black came along that it all went wrong. I’d matured earlier than they had bargained for. A witch doesn’t normally gain her powers until she is sixteen and the magic bursts free. But there I was, thirteen and blasting boys to death in the forest.
“It’s the Baker Boy,” Marianne whispered as she hurled a blanket over his limp body. “We’ll ditch him in the lake.”
They did what needed to be done and my mother and father were never quite the same again. We were happy, we led a normal life, but beneath the surface, something had changed in all of us.
When he said he’d fallen in love with someone else, I knew I could stop him, I knew I could change him with my power. Hell, we all could have done. But it only would have come back to haunt us in the end.
The night he left all those years later, my mother held me and told me to remember that no man is strong enough to stay with one of The Black Women.
“We are a powerful kind,” she stroked my hair with tears in her eyes, “The only reason your father lasted so long was because he didn’t know. I hid it from him… I tried to protect us…”
“And he only found out because of me,” I sobbed.
“No,” she hushed me. “I was weak… And from what I saw of you that day, you’re the strongest of us all.”
She kissed me on my forehead and I closed my eyes to try and sleep.
After that was when our negative energy began to change the house and everything fell apart. Our grief consumed us and as each day passed our family life rotted and disintegrated around us.
But thankfully for us, we had Marianne. And her bringing me home to Woodmont was the first step in us changing our fortune.